The 10 Biggest Political Debacles of 2012

Honorable Mention) Richard Mourdock’s Campaign: After defeating Richard Lugar, he should have been able to easily retain the GOP’s Senate seat in a state that Mitt Romney won by 10 points. He PROBABLY would have pulled it off, too — if, in a display of tone deafness comparable to the Democrats turning Paul Wellstone’s memorial into a campaign rally, he hadn’t decided to weigh in on abortion and rape after Todd Akin made the issue nuclear.

“I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Barack Obama could spend an entire eulogy talking about himself; so why can’t candidates like Richard Mourdock figure out how to artfully dodge a question about a sensitive topic?

10) Gallup and Rasmussen Reports Cause a Conservative Pundit Election Prediction Implosion: Before the election, most liberal pundits were predicting that Obama would win, while most conservative pundits (Yes, my hand is up) thought Romney would pull it off. While there was no doubt a little wishful thinking involved, what really happened was that there was a major split between Rasmussen, Gallup and the other pollsters. We believed Rasmussen and Gallup’s much more pro-Romney numbers which turned out to be the worst mistake since Napoleon decided that Russia was ripe for a winter invasion.

8) The Fiscal Cliff: This should be called the Cliff of Republican Stupidity because it was the culmination of a number of the GOP’s bad decisions that ranged from temporary tax cuts to signing on to a supercommittee that was always likely to lead to heavy defense cuts, to their poor messaging, to their insistence on sticking with the same failed leadership year after year. It got so bad that Barack Obama was even able to successfully portray the REPUBLICAN PARTY as blocking a middle class tax cut. Watching the GOP try to compete with the Democrats is like watching a teetotaler try to drink Lindsay Lohan under the table.

7)Chris Christie’s Embrace of Doom: Mitt Romney considered Chris Christie for his VP slot and gave him a keynote speaking position at the RNC. Chris Christie returned the favor, a week before the election, by embracing Barack Obama and giving him a public tongue bath for the perfunctory help he offered after the storm. It was a completely unnecessary performance designed to boost Christie’s numbers in New Jersey, but Christie’s “Et tu, Brute?” moment also temporarily tanked Romney with independents. It PROBABLY didn’t cost Mitt the election, but it did let Republicans know that Christie’s “jerk act” isn’t just an act.

6)The Head of the CIA Getting Caught With His Hand in the Cookie Jar: David Petraeus decided to “be all he could be” by banging his biographer, Paula Broadwell, on the side. On the one hand, it seems bizarre for the CIA Director to be having a secret affair that could be used by other intelligence agencies to blackmail him, but in an administration where the Treasury Director cheated on his taxes, maybe Petraeus thought he’d fit right in.

5)Obama’s Incompetence helps kill 4 Americans in Benghazi: After helping to get Mexicans and Americans killed via Fast and Furious, the Obama Administration moved on to creating a body count in Libya. Mall security could have done a better job of defending our personnel than the Libyan security that was in place. The attack went on for hours and it’s possible that we may have been able to get troops there in time to help, but it’s hard to say right now because the Obama Administration took a page out of Nixon’s playbook by lying, stonewalling and falsely blaming the entire event on a YouTube video. What’s next? Will the Obama Administration be blaming Fast and Furious on Rico Suave?

4)John Roberts’ Cutesy-Wootsy Obamacare Decision: In a bizarre turn of events, John Roberts broke with the conservatives on the Supreme Court to sign on to the biggest expansion of government power since the thirties. His reasoning was nonsensical, contradictory and required him to ignore the Constitution, but many talking heads strangely proclaimed it to be politically wise. The same Justice who once famously compared himself to an umpire, “knowingly called a ball a strike because he was afraid of getting booed by the fans of the team that was going to lose.”

3)Mitt Romney’s Presidential Campaign: Mitt Romney is an outstanding businessman and genuinely a decent guy. Unfortunately, he also has all the personality of a mannequin, is about as likable as a summer cold and is about as good at politics as Mark Sanchez is at throwing a football. Also, as we found out from his son Tagg, “He wanted to be president less than anyone I’ve met in my life. He had no desire to…run.” Maybe he should have thought about that before teaming up with the Republican establishment and his deep pocketed donor buddies to systematically smear and destroy everyone else in the Republican primary to make a path for the least electable Republican candidate since Barry Goldwater.

1) The Reelection Of Barack Obama: After the single worst performance of any President in American history, Barack Obama managed to get re-elected talking about Big Bird, binders full of women and Romney’s bank account. It a low point in American democracy and a sign that the Mayans may have been right about the end of the world, but were simply off a few years. If so, the world won’t end with a bang, it’ll end in a towering wave of stupidity, incompetence and class warfare.